


Soundscape

by flecksofpoppy



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: F/M, Humpby, Quadruple Drabble, Slingphries, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, You asked for angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ask Meme tumblr prompt - Request from somebodyslight: Break Me, Alan/Eric (tumblr meme says: Leave a “Break Me” in my ask, and I will write an angsty drabble about our characters)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soundscape

**Author's Note:**

> Four hundred words of misery, just for you! (I cheated... I couldn’t only do 100. And it's more like "This is 400 words of rambling but for the purposes this challenge IT COUNTS AS A DRABBLE OKAY.")

Reaping is all a matter of sound: the whirl of a reel, the clang of a scythe, the white noise of pub conversation. Eric has always lost himself in the din, a welcome anesthesia for an eventually reviled immortal life.

But he’s also become a connoisseur of coughs: the sound of the throat constricting, voice caught, labored breath. Dry or gasping or wet – all wordless indicators of how close the Thorns are to finally reaching Alan’s heart.

Alan’s cough, much like his presence, is a trail to pick out of the cacophony, a pathway that leads toward home. But now, they’re inextricably linked, and Eric knows he’ll never actually get there; but its presence is enough to drive him onward.

He begins to feel less like a being and more like an infection, spreading silence wherever he goes. It’s almost the same, but now there’s no din; it’s pleas, and then nothing. Flirtatious laughter, and then nothing. Terrified whimpers, and then nothing.

Acceptance of the inevitable is as simple as becoming part of the everyday din: constant, sure, unwavering.

In one life, Eric would always reap and fade into an amorphous cloud of never ending white noise; in this life, he will kill until he doesn’t need to anymore. Whatever fate lies after that is irrelevant.

Survival is not a case of crescendos and decrescendos, but straight lines of perfectly rhythmic notes; simple and steady.

And yet it’s also a simple moment, when Alan kisses Eric for the first time, and smiles warmly at him as he reaches out to touch Eric’s face – calm, as if he’s also resigned himself to the fact that death is as inevitable for him as for humankind.

Alan’s kisses are quiet, and Eric realizes that quietude is very different than silence. He wonders about hell for the first time, about the brand of human suffering with which Alan empathizes.

Aching is like suffering; reapers are not expected to inflict punishments, because death is always fair. Eric’s sudden realization makes him wary of contracting the Thorns himself, as he finally comprehends the curse.

He endures the agonizing entrapment between silence and deafening noise just for the day. He stays with Alan, and they wordlessly kiss and explore.

When the day finally ends and darkness starts to fall, Eric closes his eyes as his arms tighten around Alan’s naked body.

And then, back into the din.


End file.
